Creep Alert: Greg Abbott’s Office Spying On Elderly Woman Through Her Bathroom Window

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Gloria Meeks, via Erin Trieb for the New York Times

Gloria Meeks, via Erin Trieb for the New York Times


Republican Greg Abbott has taken the war on women a little too far. Sure, he’s against paycheck fairness and equal pay, and he chose a corporation over a rape victim. But to spy on an elderly woman through her bathroom window seems a bit far fetched, even for a Texas Republican.

But the ends justify the ever increasing desperate means it seems. Republicans figuratively donned their James O’Keefe investigative pimp kits and headed out to frighten elderly minority women in a desperate and misguided attempt to prove that non-existent voter fraud was a thing. Why not spy on naked citizens using their bathrooms in the name of small government?

Yes. In 2006, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, charged with upholding the law, deployed his office in an “investigation” to prove voter fraud that was dubbed a “wild goose chase.” It was during this “investigation” that an elderly woman said in a sworn statement that two investigators from Greg Abbott’s office were peeking in her bathroom window.

The Houston Chronicle reported at the time:

Gloria Meeks of Fort Worth, also 69, said she stepped out of her morning bath last month and screamed.

Two voter fraud investigators from Attorney General Greg Abbott’s office were peeking in her bathroom window, Meeks said in a sworn statement.

Ms. Meeks said she was being investigated for helping the elderly and disabled vote, according to the New York Times.

Via a Lonestar Report on her sworn statement, we learn that she was naked and the agents justified this because they thought it was a kitchen window:

According to the sworn statement of Ms. Gloria Meeks, a 69 year- old Fort Worth community activist, two of Abbott’s voter fraud agents came on to her property and looked into her bathroom window while she was unclothed and leaving the shower. Incredibly, the agents justified their privacy violation by explaining, that they thought they were peeping in the “kitchen window.”

Oh. So that’s what Texas would be like if Abbott wins. Good times.

Lest you get caught up in the whole spying on an elderly woman through her bathroom window, the effort was much more widespread than that. The Lonestar Project revealed in 2008 that the results of Abbott’s very expensive “investigation” proved that voter fraud was practically non-existent. But also, “Texas Democratic Party officials and legal counsel became aware and concerned about the Texas Attorney Genera’s vote suppression efforts following the release of reports from the Lone Star Project. The reports raise questions about the legality of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s use of federal grant funds to investigate and prosecute citizens who have participated in mail ballot programs that benefit seniors and the disabled.”

Mail in your ballot? The Abbot team might be peeking in your bathroom windows! You know, just to be sure. Not to worry, though, if you are a Republican. Republican voters were not under “investigation” in this effort to get rid of a non-existent problem. But it’s totally legitimate to prosecute just your opposition, right? Like a witch hunt, but without the public aspect. This is what we want from our Attorney Generals – to take us back to before the American justice system.

The Lonestar Project busted the AG again:

The Lone Star Project issued numerous open records requests to the AG and found that virtually all the prosecutions were of minority senior citizens who were doing nothing more than helping their neighbors vote. Additional research showed that ALL those prosecuted were Democrats. This research was confirmed by a Dallas Morning News investigative report this month detailing that:

“26 cases – all against Democrats, and almost all involving blacks or Hispanics… In 18 of the 26 cases, the voters were eligible, votes were properly cast and no vote was changed – but the people who collected the ballots for mailing were prosecuted.” (Dallas Morning News, May 18, 2008)

Intimidating minorities to rig the vote? No problem! Greg Abbott has been trying anything he can think of to keep minorities from voting, which is the opposite of upholding the law.

In fact, his office is back in court this week defending Republican-championed redistricting maps (congressional and legislative) from charges that they intentionally discriminate against African Americans and Hispanics. It’s not like he did an investigation that only went after mostly minority Democrats and spied on an elderly minority woman in her bathroom. What can go wrong?

Abbott has only spent $3.9 million of Texas taxpayers’ money on the defense, though, so it’s not like he’s going full pimp O’Keefe yet. But the meter is still running at full speed. Anything to give the Republicans an edge.

Sarah Jones
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